While Valve has hinted at it in the past, a recent interview with Gabe Newell on Eurogamer is keen on letting Steam users trade games and other items, saying that he sees games on this platform moving in a direction "where everything is an item of exchange."

Earlier this month, Valve added the ability on Steam to allow users to trade unplayed games among themselves. Newell said during that interview that the company's longer-term plans for Steam included allowing players to eventually trade in games through Steam. He also admitted that his company needed to "better understand" the concepts in play and if there is some sort of economic impact.

"We think we want to move in the direction where everything is an item of exchange," Newell said. "We just aren't totally sure how to do that right. We're sure there are economists out there who understand this really well. We feel like we're this third-world developing country. We've discovered rocks! And we've discovered sticks! And there's this other thing out there and we should move our economy in that direction. There must be somebody at the World Bank who can tell us what we ought to be doing. We just don't know what that is yet."

Valve already took the first step this month with Steam Trading, a program that lets users exchange in-game items and gifted titles with each other. The program launched with support for Team Fortress 2 items and games purchased as gifts in the Steam store, but Valve plans to add Portal 2 in-game items to the beta shortly. Once customers purchase a game as a gift (or receive an extra copy), they can trade it for the games or virtual items they want with any other users. Any "unopened" gift can be traded, with no restrictions on territory.

Comments

Over the years i've accidentally developed 2 steam accounts. Every time i add a game, it gets added to whichever account i've last logged into. A year ago i contacted valve and asked them if they could combine the accounts. It's pretty clear they're both mine, they've got the same information on them, and have had since their inception.

Naturally, they told me NO. Maybe now, just maybe, i'l be able to transfer all the games from one account to the other.

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ZippyDSMlee: .....win8 hates any left over hidden install partitions from other version of windows....only waste 5 hours finding that out...its ahrder than you think keeping up with 4 or 5 HDDS......03/03/2015 - 4:44am

Matthew Wilson: I am going to pax east, any games you guys want me to check out?03/02/2015 - 11:23pm

ZippyDSMlee: No one remembers the days of Cinemagic and Cynergy eh? :P, meh even MGS is getting to film like....03/02/2015 - 8:44pm

MechaTama31: I was about to get all defensive about liking Metal Gear Solid, but then I saw that he was talking about "cinematic" as a euphemism for "crappy framerate".03/02/2015 - 8:29pm

prh99: Just replace cinematic with the appropriate synonym for poo and you'll have gist of any press release.03/02/2015 - 5:34pm

Monte: Though from a business side, i would agree with the article. While it would be smarter for developers to slow down, you can't expect EA, Activision or ubisoft to do something like that. Nintnedo's gotta get the third party back.02/28/2015 - 4:36pm

Monte: Though it does also help that nintendo's more colorful style is a lot less reliant on graphics than more realistic games. Wind Waker is over 10 years old and still looks good for its age.02/28/2015 - 4:33pm

Monte: With the Wii, nintnedo had the right idea. Hold back on shiny graphics and focus on the gameplay experience. Unfortunatly everyone else keeps pushing for newer graphics and it matters less and less each generation. I can barely notice the difference02/28/2015 - 4:29pm

Monte: ON third party developers; i kinda think they should slow down to nintendo's pace. They bemoan the rising costs of AAA gaming, but then constantly push for the best graphics which is makes up a lot of those costs. Be easier to afford if they held back02/28/2015 - 4:27pm

Matthew Wilson: http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2015/02/28/the-world-is-nintendos-if-only-theyd-take-it/ I think this is a interesting op-ed, but yeah it kind of is stating the obvious.02/28/2015 - 2:52pm